Mark Sanford Still Cares About Spending

The Republican presidential candidate sells his fiscal conservatism to Trevor Noah.

Former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, who announced his Republican presidential campaign at the beginning of September, is cutting through the heated political climate to remind his party of an old but looming issue.

During a Monday night appearance on The Daily Show, Sanford said, "Whether I'm successful or not, I think we need to have a conversation about where we're going as Republicans and where we're going as a country." When asked by host Trevor Noah the areas in which Republicans have lost their way, Sanford spoke of the issues that were once "hallmarks" in his party's national conversation.

Sanford began with spending and the national debt, saying that both have "spun indeed out of control" under President Donald Trump. Sanford also added that regardless of personal feelings over the methods Republicans used to address both issues in the past, there was a time when "Republicans were recognized for trying on that front."

Sanford also compared Trump's praise of the economy under his presidency to a family carrying out a facade of prosperity while secretly dealing with insurmountable credit card debt.

Will Republican voters be swayed by Sanford's fiscal message or has Trumpian nationalism fully taken hold in the party?

"It's either all the conversations I've had over the past 25 years of politics in the [House of Representatives] and two terms as governor, either they didn't matter and they weren't real or they were," he replied.

Sanford's in a tough spot. Despite years of calling for a more fiscally responsible government, he became one of the first casualties of the Trumpism that has overtaken the Republican Party. Though he advocated for more limited government, Sanford was an early critic of Trump's demeanor. Not only did he lose his reelection bid in 2018, but his loss appeared to be indicative of the power of the new Republican Party.

As Reason reported last year, the Associated Press also found that rather than campaign on successful tax cut legislation, ads for Republican midterm challengers focused heavily on support for Trump and the border wall, even in states that do not touch the southern border.

"We wish [economic policy] got the pitchforks out," GOP ad maker Will Ritter told the AP. "It doesn't."

Sanford acknowledged this reality in his Monday interview. He mentioned that he believed his campaign would uncover whether or not fiscal values remain important to Republican voters.

Even if Sanford attracts supporters, he'll still need to overcome party politics. A handful of state Republican officials have canceled their primaries in support of Trump.

The full interview can be watched here (interview starts at 18:56).

Comments

[Jerryskids]

LOL - So even Trevor Noah is willing to have an evil Nazi white supremacist on his show so long as that evil Nazi white supremacist is willing to talk shit about Donald Trump? How desperate have they become?

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Plus, distracting the national conversation from all the injustices heaped on the President is just unpatriotic. The debt? Spending? Who cares about such trifles when drag queens are reading books to our kids in public libraries, when teenage autistic girls are allowed to scream about climate change, when hoards of zombies are scaling our southern walls!!!!!

[Chipper Morning Wood]

*hordes, but I guess hoards works as well

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[loveconstitution1789]

Mark Sanford Still Cares About Spending

...on the Argentinian woman market!

[tlapp]

Yes, AWOL with his mistress.

[Bluwater]

But nobody cares about Mark Sanford. I mean.... nobody. Couldn't even make the House primary win in his own state, so the only sense I can make out of this run is a pitifully sad loser is he's joining the pool of politicians who did something once and now just make a living out of running for office to keep their campaign paycheck happening.

[loveconstitution1789]

Trevor Noah is a Lefty shitbird.

You are being used like the tool that you are, Sanford.

You know what would really scare the shit out of Lefties? All Republicans past and present standing with Trump to cut federal spending. Democrats would be screaming! It would have even been better when the GOP controlled both the House and Senate.

[JFree]

You know what would scare them even more? Pigs eating prunes flying around indiscriminately crapping on everything.

And that's more likely to happen than your scenario too.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""Pigs eating prunes flying around indiscriminately crapping on everything.""

Are you call Hihn a prune eating pig?

[loveconstitution1789]

See, Jfree is so scared that he has to deflect rather than say whether it would scare his Lefty friends.

[wearingit]

Seriously, your comments are a waste of bytes lc.

[loveconstitution1789]

Poor troll wearingit. It needs to be liked and does not get enough of those here.

[awildseaking]

Exactly. The moment RINOs return and become domesticated, it'll be back to the same antics.

[Dillinger]

nein nyet non! "creh-di-bi-li-tee"

[Fist of Etiquette]

At this point, no one is interested in curbing spending. (Libertarians don't count.) More power to you, Sanford. You're tilting at a windmill that's already been razed.

[$park¥ is the Worst]

He’s gonna pull a Vontaze Burfict on that windmill to get himself disqualified from the race.

[mad.casual]

The windmill has been razed and both sides are equally bad about jousting at the pile of ashes.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

""Mark Sanford Still Cares About Spending""

On mistresses?

[JFree]

whether or not fiscal values remain important to Republican voters

I'll go with NOT for $1000

[EscherEnigma]

Sanford also added that regardless of personal feelings over the methods Republicans used to address both issues in the past, there was a time when "Republicans were [given unearned credit] for trying on that front."

Fixed.

Fact is, Republicans have never been the party of "fiscal responsibility", and their reputation as such is entirely unearned.

[mad.casual]

Fact is, Republicans have never been the party of “fiscal responsibility”, and their reputation as such is entirely unearned.

Absolutely correct and I'm not entirely sure it's their fault. Like maybe a little fiscal responsibility got spattered on them when Democrats tossed themselves into the jaws of defeat. Or enough Democratic dynasties turned enough cities into absolute shitholes that anybody who wasn't a democrat was fiscally responsible in comparison.

They aren't fiscally responsible. They just aren't near as openly and thematically irresponsible as their opposition some fraction of the time.

[wearingit]

Truer words never spoken.

[Chipper Jones]

So then you love Republicans, what with their free spending, right?

See, Republicans sometimes talk favorably about limited government, or "the era of big government being over" like 1996 Bill Clinton. They certainly don't do a great job of carrying it out but they act like it's a good thing. The current crop of democrats openly abhors smaller government and thinks anything less than many more trillions in annual spending is evidence of a desire to return black people to slavery.

[tlapp]

Fact, the majority of voters don't care about it either. It is just the whipping post for whichever party is out of power. Libertarians are not making a dent.
The deficit will be address exactly one day after our bond market blows up.

[wearingit]

Why is anyone surprised? No Republican cares about the debt. It's just a rallying cry when a Dem is in office, nothing more.

[loveconstitution1789]

Poor troll.

Democrats and Republicans- same same but different.

[mad.casual]

You can tell they're the exact same by pointing to all the second-tier candidates on the left who are similarly pro-fiscal responsibility even if only as token gestures to distance themselves from their spendthrift opposition. In fact, they're so much the same that if you had close to a dozen second-tier candidates on the left and you averaged them all; from the more rare batshit-insane free-shit policy proponents, to the more abundant 'fuck you, cut spending' purists, you'd get the average Democratic message, "We should be fiscally responsible." The same as Mark Sanford's.

[BYODB]

You can tell they’re the exact same by pointing to all the second-tier candidates on the left who are similarly pro-fiscal responsibility even if only as token gestures to distance themselves from their spendthrift opposition.

Like Yang with his VAT taxes and UBI? I mean, he's supposedly one of their fiscal guys isn't he?

[damikesc]

Zuri, as a heads up, the seat Sanford held --- he BARELY won it in the first place. It's not like him losing the primary was a shot out of the blue. He was lucky to be elected in the first place.

[Juice]

And yet, no one cares about Mark Sanford.

[loveconstitution1789]

Who?

[Uncle Jay]

"Sanford began with spending and the national debt, saying that both have "spun indeed out of control" under President Donald Trump."

Well, yeah.
Trump is nothing more than a democrat when it comes to spending other people's money.

[Cerberus]

Spending is still an important issue but Mark Sanford is not the guy to deliver that message. He is so despised by South Carolina conservatives whom he betrayed with his lying that he can't even win his own state. Hell, he couldn't even keep his Congressional seat.